Collaborative Insight Platform

Understanding their audience is a top priority for the Discovery Channel but what if this insight was used as a platform for new collaboration opportunities with other brands?

This Jam programme began with the Discovery Channel making lifestyle research data available to a number of diverse noncompetitive brands with similar interests - including Gilette, E.ON, Royal Mail, Samsung, Sagem Wireless, Do the Green Thing, Microsoft, Campbell's Soup, Diageo, Cancer Research UK - and facilitated by co-creation agency Sense Worldwide together with NESTA.

The purpose of the programme was to encourage them to use the research insights, add their own perspectives, and to co-create new product ideas and joint ventures. The launch pad for the process is Species, the most comprehensive piece of research ever carried out into the changing lifestyles of young men across Europe, commissioned by Discovery Channel.

A web 2.0 application made the insights available to a select number of complementary brands who are adding to the insight and creating conversations around it. Corporate Connect and Sense Worldwide then ran a series of face-to-face workshops with consumers and category experts in addition to senior marketing, innovation and strategy staff from participating brands.

The programme was launched in early 2010 shortly followed by an alignment workshop and a co-creation workshop. The first phase was completed in early March 2010, with five outline collaborative business cases currently being developed by the project partners. We see this as a model for how big brands can build new innovation opportunities through collaboration based on their consumer insights.